DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Description) The Seattle Cancer and Aging Program is a coordinated response between the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington Nathan Shock Center for aging research to explore the connection of cancer and aging. This proposal is a research planning and development grant application to support activities that will expand the capacity of our NCI-designated Cancer Center to engage in research that concentrates on aging- and age-related aspects of human cancer. Our goal is to support research and educational activities that will promote the establishment of a formal interdisciplinary aging/cancer research "Program" as a component of our NCI-funded Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG). To achieve this goal we plan to fund a series of pilot projects that will foster new collaborations, yield promising research results, catalyze new independent research grants, and lay the foundation for a continuing unified research effort in cancer and aging. The consortium of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington has an usually strong and diverse faculty with aging and cancer interest who will be able to take advantage of this support. In our initial series of pilot projects we first concentrate on the thematic area of the Biology of Aging and Cancer; as demonstrated in the proposal, future proposed pilots involve all of the seven thematic areas of support. We believe we are in an unique position to forge an interactive, top-rate cancer and aging program. We are blessed with top-rate researchers, state-of-the-art resources, and rock-solid institutional commitment to make this a successful program. We fully expect that the activities outlined in this proposal will lead to important discovery and lay the foundation for significant scientific effort in the future.